LAC-MEGANTIC, Que. — Investigators with the Transportation Safety Board said they have recovered the black box from the runaway freight train that derailed and exploded here Saturday and will be examining it for clues into what caused the disaster.

The train of 72 oil tank cars, owned by Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, had been parked on a siding in Nantes Friday night when it began rolling on its own down the tracks that descend into Lac-Mégantic, about 10 kilometres away.

Donald Ross, investigator in charge with the TSB, said investigators will focus on the train’s brakes to learn how the unmanned train broke free.

“Certainly the manner in which the train was secured, both air brakes and hand brakes, we’ll be looking very strongly at that,” he said. Fellow investigator Ed Belkaloul said it will be “a 360-degree investigation. We are going to try to turn over all stones.” He said they have not yet met the engineer who parked the train, leaving it for another crew to take over.

Normally, the train would be secured by hand and air brakes.

About 40 people are considered missing after the spectacular blaze and explosions that razed much of Lac-Megantic, increasing the likelihood that the number of fatalities could soar from the current official death toll of five.

“I can tell you that we have met a lot of people….and what I can tell you is that about 40 people are considered missing,” Quebec provincial police Lt. Michel Brunet told a news conference.

“We have to be careful with that number because it could go up or down.”

The first body was discovered Saturday and Brunet said two more bodies were found overnight and another two on Sunday morning.

Police say a higher death toll is inevitable.

In a statement Sunday afternoon, Montreal, Maine & Atlantic suggested the failure of the air brakes might have been a factor.

“One fact that has emerged is the locomotive of the oil train parked at Nantes station was shut down subsequent to the departure of the engineer who had handled the train from Farnham, which may have resulted in the release of air brakes on the locomotive that was holding the train in place.”

Mr. Belkaloul confirmed that air brakes require power from the locomotive to function.

It was not clear what could have led to the locomotive being shut down. Authorities have said Nantes firefighters responded to a fire on the same train at around 11:30 Friday night. The company said the train had been “tied down” in Nantes at 11:25 and the engineer had retired to a nearby hotel.

Local Fire Chief Denis Lauzon said firefighters in a nearby community were called to a locomotive blaze on the same train a few hours before the derailment. Lauzon said he could not provide additional details about that fire since it was in another jurisdiction. Joe McGonigle, Montreal, Maine & Atlantic’s vice-president of marketing, confirmed the fire department showed up after the first engineer tied up and went to a local hotel. Someone later reported a fire.

“We know that one of our employees from our engineering department showed up at the same time to assist the fire department. Exactly what they did is being investigated so the engineer wasn’t the last man to touch that train, we know that, but we’re not sure what happened,” McGonigle said.

McGonigle said there was no reason to suspect any criminal or terror-related activity.

TSB investigators will examine each train car to determine whether the hand brakes had been engaged, but they are not yet able to access the heart of the crash site.

About 30 buildings were destroyed after tanker cars laden with oil caught fire shortly after 1 a.m., forcing 2,000 residents from their homes. One of them is the Musi-Cafe bar where dozens of people were enjoying themselves in the wee hours of a glorious summer night. Most of the missing are believed to have been at the bar.

The multiple blasts over a span of several hours sent people fleeing as the explosions rocked the popular downtown core in the municipality of 6,000, about 250 kilometres east of Montreal.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited the town on Sunday and said it looks like a “war zone.”

In terms of financial aid, Harper said there is a formula that calculates the federal response for events like this.

“I saw this on the international news yesterday (Saturday),” he said. ”Everywhere people are talking about this.

“It’s a beautiful downtown here that’s been destroyed… There’s really going to be a need for substantial reconstruction.”

Brunet said the inferno that consumed the downtown core burned the bodies so badly that it was impossible to even identify their gender. “You saw the violence of the fire? You can conclude what state the bodies are in,” he said.

The Quebec coroner’s office said it was possible that the force of the blast and the subsequent fire vaporized some of the victims.

The bodies of the victims will be transported to a Montreal forensic laboratory for autopsies.

“It was like a movie,” said Bernard Theberge, who was close to the accident site and suffered second-degree burns on his arm.

“Explosions as if it were scripted — but this was live.”

Family members are being asked to provide DNA samples and dental records to aid in the eventual identification of their loved ones. The length of the process gives an idea of the possible toll of the disaster.

“All night long, dozens of investigators met witnesses, people who were at the high school [crisis centre] and came to talk to us about missing people, either friends or family members,” Lt. Brunet said. “That lasted all night, and it is continuing now.”

Quebec provincial police Sgt. Benoit Richard said only a small part of the devastated area had been searched Sunday, more than a day since the accident, because firefighters were making sure all fires were out.

Two tanker cars were burning Sunday morning, and authorities were still worried about them Sunday evening. Lauzon, the fire chief, said firefighters were staying 150 metres from the tankers, which were being doused with water and foam to keep them from overheating.

Authorities said Saturday that no federal assistance — such as military help — had been requested.

“We have all the firemen that we need,” Lac-Megantic fire chief Denis Lauzon said, adding they had 125 firefighters on the ground.

Police are still unable to access the two-square kilometer heart of the disaster zone, including the site of a popular bar that was packed with an estimated 30 or 40 revellers when the train derailed just meters away at around 1:15 a.m. Saturday.

Lac-Mégantic fire chief Denis Lauzon said firefighters made progress against the blaze overnight with the aid of a special foam brought in from the Ultramar refinery in Quebec City. At 9:30 p.m. Saturday, five tanker cars were burning out of control. Sunday morning only two continued to burn.

“We do not want to put the lives of firefighters at risk by going to a tanker that could blow up because of the heat,” he said. “We will proceed with caution, step-by step, but I might have some good news by the end of the day.”

Quebec Premier Pauline Marois toured the town Saturday and said she was saddened and shocked by the level of devastation. At an evening news conference, she praised the town’s mayor, Colette Roy-Larouche, for her courage and thanked the team of first responders.

Benoit Quérion was inside a bar in the town’s centre with about six others when the explosion happened.

“They’re all dead,” he said, when asked if he thought any of the others had survived.

Brunet said he could not say where the five bodies were found.

After hearing the first explosion, Quérion ran outside the bar. He said that amidst the smoke and flames he couldn’t see anything left of the train cars that exploded.

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His car was next to the explosion, and was completely destroyed, he said.

“The car’s not a big deal. A lot of my friends were lost in there,” he said.

“The sky was completely blotted out, a vivid red,” said Viviane St-Pierre, who lives two blocks from the site of the explosion.

“Just as I opened my front door, the third explosion happened,” she said. “When I opened the door, fireballs went up the block. I woke up my boyfriend and said ‘Hurry up, we have to go, the train’s on fire.’”

St-Pierre and her boyfriend, his face still covered with streaks of black soot, were at the Red Cross shelter Saturday near the town’s high school, a few kilometres from the site of the explosion, where about 400 evacuees — 325 adults and 68 children — were staying.

More than 150 firefighters from neighbouring towns, Sherbrooke, Maine and elsewhere in the United States have helped to battle the blaze.

The Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway was founded in January of 2003. According to the company’s website, it owns over 510 route miles of track, serving customers in Quebec, Maine, Vermont and New Brunswick.

McGonigle said the company is assisting authorities and will continue to cooperate with the investigation into the accident.

Flames and billowing black smoke could be seen throughout the day Saturday, as firefighters doused the blaze for hours.

“The Metro (grocery) store, Dollarama, everything that was there is gone,” said resident Claude Bedard.

Dozens of locals stood on the main drag leading into the downtown area, hours after the explosions. Many locals had been awake much of the night, after the area shook from blasts that one man initially thought was a “nuclear” bomb and shot flames higher than the steeple of a nearby church.

They stared down the straight street from behind the orange tape. Less than a kilometre down Rue Laval a railway tanker sat at the edge of the road as flames danced around it.

Many of them feared the worst.

“On a beautiful evening like this… there were a lot of people there,” said Bernard Demers, who owns a restaurant near the blast site.

“It was a big explosion. It’s a catastrophe. It’s terrible for the population.”

Demers, whose home was evacuated, described the scene in town overnight.

“Early this morning (there was) a big explosion like an atomic bomb,” said Demers, who has lived in Lac-Megantic for 45 years.

“A beautiful town but now it won’t be the same.”

Charles Coue said he and his wife awoke to the explosion, which went off a couple of hundred metres from their home.

“(We felt) the heat,” said Coue, who sprinted from his house with his wife amid the panic.

“It went boom and it came like a fireball.”

A Facebook group was quickly set up to help people track down loved ones who couldn’t be reached by phone.

A woman offering to locate people at an emergency centre set up at the local high school received hundreds of requests for help.

Several neighbouring municipalities, including Sherbrooke and Saint-Georges-de-Beauce, were enlisted to help Lac-Megantic deal with the disaster.

The train’s oil was being transported from North Dakota’s Bakken oil region to a refinery in New Brunswick. Because of limited pipeline capacity in the Bakken region and in Canada, oil producers are increasingly using railroads to transport much of the oil to refineries.

The Canadian Railway Association recently estimated that as many as 140,000 carloads of crude oil will be shipped on Canada’s tracks this year _ up from just 500 carloads in 2009. The Quebec disaster is the fourth freight train accident in Canada under investigation involving crude oil shipments since the beginning of the year.

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